The Defense Budget is getting debated now and this "news" really does seem aimed at Congress.
Space Force and SDA want to fund their constellation of hypersonic reentry vehicles based on the SpaceX Starlink platform [1,2,3]. It would provide instant kill capability around the world. China is the justification for this massive buildup of weapons in space.
[1] https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/space-based-missile-defense...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Pebbles (old project now rebooted with SDA)
[3] https://www.nap.edu/download/13189 (Details matching original Starlink orbits, click Download as Guest)
Even a few years ago the cost to launch all this would have been astronomical, but SpaceX has since brought costs down by 1 order of magnitude (or 2-orders with Starship). Still expensive, but within reach with a little warmongering.
1. To what extent are critical satellites already built to handle these threats?
2. How much of an offensive capability does the US already possess in terms of retaliation? [Edit : Seems like there are a ton of programs in existence already! How many more are actually needed?]
3. Are the views represented a minority or a majority view in the defense establishment?
4. Like [1], what do the JASONs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JASON_(advisory_group)) or other groups that do not stand to gain directly from a budgetary increase towards defending such attacks have to say on the opinions of the general quoted in the headline?
While not mentioned in the article, my understanding is that some of the current attacks are only quasi-reversible e.g. some appear to be specifically designed to cause satellites to waste all the fuel in their maneuvering thrusters, greatly shortening their service life.
It would pay to be the first nation with a Brilliant Pebbles installation, since such an installation could be used to deny any other nation the ability to create the same. Brilliant Pebbles isn't merely an anti-missile system; it could also be used to intercept rockets launching satellites, including the launch other BP systems. It's a winner-takes-all game.
If the strategic interests of America are not your own interests, all of this obviously seems very grim. If you think strategic defense is just a waste of money, then all of this is more of the same. But if you're the sort of person who thinks that billions of dollars spent on nuclear submarines is money well spent, then using Starship to launch a Brilliant Pebbles constellation is a no-brainer.
Anyway, the Russians or the Chinese, if they reasonably feel they’re being denied access to space will trigger the Kessler syndrome. what happens if the Russians counter the 1000 mini-pebbles in space with ten massive satellites filled with TNT, ball bearings and a remote trigger?
Ultimately, thats what I would do if I got bored of the space race. Put enough TNT up there to deny space for everyone if need be.
What Brilliant Pebbles wouldn't be any good against is cruise missiles that remain in the atmosphere, and ultra long range nuclear torpedoes. Russia is working on both, doubtlessly for this very reason.
Its pedantic though. The new missiles do have a shallow trajectory specifically to avoid interception including in the boost phase.
Add to that, the Russians have hypersonic missiles.
Starlink wont checkmate the Russians.
I have no idea if it's real or not, but it sounds plausible, at least the passive attacks. It's mere speculation, though, that this can or will escalate to physical, irreversible attacks.
I think it's also likely that the US is conducting the same kinds of reversible attacks on adversaries' satellites, too. Or at the very least, we have the capacity to do so, and have tested it on our own gear.
He's just sounding the drums and banging his chest is all.
That's blatantly false.
https://time.com/5779315/russian-spacecraft-spy-satellite-sp...
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/09/911113352/new-chinese-space-p...
The article is mostly about ground-based attacks, which pretty much everyone can do.
EM "attacks" wouldn't do much except if you are trying to spy on the EM spectrum in that are so they are more like a "defense". They won't make the satellite unusable.
Similarly with EM, the holy grail would be to send valid control commands to the satellite, or to jam the satellite during some critical period. Satellites are already designed to receive the signals.
1. They made a laser that included a phase conjugate mirror such that if you hit the system with some incoming laser light it would greatly amplify it and send it back the way it came.
To use this as a weapon, you'd point it at your target, hit the target with a guide laser, some of that light reflects off the target and enters your phase conjugate laser, and your phase conjugate laser sends a much stronger beam back.
As long as your target is near enough that atmospheric conditions between your weapon and the target have not had a chance to change over the time of a speed of light round trip, all the atmospheric distortions that dispersed the guide laser's reflection to the weapon serve to concentrate the weapon's beam on the target.
2. You can make an energy weapon that uses a phased array of radiators to direct the beam. You aim it in the general direction of your target.
Then you can start varying the phase of each radiator, and you analyze the reflections from the target. If a given radiator happens to be at the right phase so that it is contributing toward producing a maximum or a minimum at the target you won't see much variation in the reflection at the frequency you are varying that radiator's phase. If the phase of the radiator is such that it is in between, you'll see more variation at that frequency in the reflection. (A graph of the radiator's contribution versus phase looks like a sine wave. When it is maximally contributing it is at the peak, when not it is near a zero. Near a peak wiggling side to side doesn't change much because a sine wave is flatter there. When near a zero the sine wave is steep so a little side to side wiggle changes a lot).
Use a different frequency for the phase variation of each radiator, feed what you see reflected into a Fourier analyzer, and use the relative strengths of what you see at the variation frequencies as feedback to adjust the radiator phases, and you can get the array to quickly adjust to by focused on and stay on the target.
They were playing around with a small one of these at Hughes Research Laboratories in the late '70s. I know because the professor [1] who taught APh 23 (Demonstration Lectures in Optics) at Caltech when I took it in the '79-80 school year was also a researcher at Hughes working on it, and one class he showed us a video of a test.
It was pretty cool. It started with a black background and a bunch of blobs of light moving around as the system has nothing to focus on. Then someone dangled a small metal model of the starship Enterprise in front of the background, and all the blobs instantly converged on it.
"These five treaties deal with issues such as the non-appropriation of outer space by any one country, arms control, the freedom of exploration, liability for damage caused by space objects, the safety and rescue of spacecraft and astronauts, the prevention of harmful interference with space activities and the environment, the notification and registration of space activities, scientific investigation and the exploitation of natural resources in outer space and the settlement of disputes.
Each of the treaties stresses the notion that outer space, the activities carried out in outer space and whatever benefits might be accrued from outer space should be devoted to enhancing the well-being of all countries and humankind, with an emphasis on promoting international cooperation."
To me that last part is what I notice. Should be devoted to enhancing the well being of all countries and humankind, with emphasis on promoting international cooperation. So how would spying do any of that? It is more likely to get the other country angry and not cooperate. If there is relevant text that shows spying is actually legal please do show it, I am not saying you are incorrect but I am having a hard time verifying your claim. Do you have a direct source that spells it out? Again, thanks.
I can assure you we're doing the same thing, though.
> The systems that Russia and China are known to be developing or have already fielded include destructive and non-destructive types that are deployed from Earth, such as ground-based jammers, lasers, or interceptors, as well as small "killer satellites" positioned in orbit. A killer satellite able to maneuver close to its target could use various means to try to disable, damage, or even destroy it, such as jammers, directed energy weapons, robotic arms, chemical sprays, and small projectiles. It could even deliberately smash into the other satellite in a kinetic attack.
Also, how do the US military's capabilities inform us about what other militaries are doing?
Traditionally, any remote controlled aircraft is a drone, it seems fair to say any remote controlled spacecraft is also a drone.
The first drone, from which the term 'drone' came, was a radio controlled de Havilland Tiger Moth created in 1935, named "Queen Bee". It was a gunnery target drone, built for the purpose of being shot down, intended to fly only once. 'Drone' is a pun on that single-flight use and the name 'Queen bee'; male bees, which fly only once before dying, are called drones.
These days it's trendy for people to put forth their own definitions of 'drone' that have qualifiers like "it must have autonomy" or "it must be able to land". But the first drone had neither capability and the term itself is at odds with the latter.
That probably?
It's not a new problem. From the beginning of the Enlightenment especially, we have developed many tools for discerning truth from falsehood and thinking critically.
Can you expand a bit? It doesn't seem like the types of attacks the general mentioned require those capabilities, so the US monopoly on space drones* comes across as a non-sequitor.
* Which I would argue doesn't exist, due to the existence of autonomous vehicles like Буран and 可重复使用试验航天器
The CCP military may be ahead in number of rockets but the US is way ahead in number of spy satellites by a far margin and can also commission civilian capabilities for this.